Writing a code can be a tricky business especially for big projects. It requires processes and code management which consumes a lot of time. A good code is one that is maintainable, reusable, and testable. Given below are a few tips that will tell you how you can handle coding tasks and work in tandem with your development team.
Use a Coding Standard
Understanding is necessary to write a good code because a bad code might be an easy one to write but it turns out to be unorganized and hard to maintain. A good code is the one that follows some standard for naming conventions, formatting, etc. Why is it important to define these standards? They make things deterministic to those who read your code afterward.
You can also create your own coding standard but choosing the one that is widely accepted.
Publicly maintained standards like Zend Framework Coding Standard or soon to be PSR-1 Coding Style Guide instead makes it easier to adapt.
Write Useful Comments
Always write comments for future reference, because it is very helpful to maintain the code. So here are a few tips on how you should write the comment!
Write meaningful, single-line comments for vague lines; write full parameter and functionality descriptions for functions and methods; for tricky logic blocks, describe the logic in words before it if necessary. And keep updating your comments
Refactor
To be a good developer to need to adopt the habit of refactoring your code regularly otherwise you will end up with bad code development. While refactoring keep in mind that you need to refactor everything including your architecture to your methods and functions, variable names, the number of arguments and method received, etc.
Given below are a few rules of thumb that you need to follow to refactor your code daily.
You should not be adding more than 20-25 lines to your function or methods because it will appear that you are putting too much logic into it. So you can split it into two smaller functions or methods
The name of the function or method should be less than 20 characters.
Keep your nested loops less than three. Because having a lot of nested loops is like doing resource-intensive processing which is more than the requirement of 2 loops.
Look for applicable design patterns in your code to follow. These patterns offer tried-and-true ready-thought solutions that can be applied
Avoid Global Code
Choosing global variables and loops is not a very good idea as it can be a problem when your application grows to millions of lines of code. As a result of this, the code might come under the influence of name clashing and pollute the namespace with variables, functions, loops, etc.
The ideal case would be if there will be no blocks defined globally. That is all switch statements, try-catch, for each, while-loops, etc. It is necessary that all the methods are written inside class definition and class function definitions should be within namespaces.
Use Meaningful Names
It is recommended to not use names like $k, $m, and $test for the variables. It is also important that these variables remain meaningful to you in the future as well in terms of variable names, function/method names, and class names. You can use names such as $request, $dbResult, and $tempFile (depending on your coding style guidelines these may use underscores, camelCase, or PascalCase).
Use Meaningful Structures
It is always better not to use complicated structures and keep the simplicity of your charm. Split the four parts of any typical PHP application apart from each other – CSS, HTML Templates/Layouts, JavaScript, PHP Code – for each part, split libraries from a business point of view. Keep your directory hierarchy as shallow as possible so it’s easier to navigate and find the code you’re looking for.
Use Version Control Software
Make your solutions ever easy and effective. So while picking up any version control software, keep in mind the management, changes, and revisions for the best workflow of your developers. It is preferred to use distributed version control tools like Git or Mercurial; both are free software/open source and very powerful.
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Last Modified: July 2, 2024 at 4:03 am
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